I’m wondering why we haven’t heard more from Russia. The
ill-fated Tsar Nicholas led the centennial celebrations in 1912, and of course
it was an earlier Tsar’s army who beat Napoleon in 1812, so perhaps the desire
to minimize that governance in Russia’s history might have been part of it. The
Russians are also extremely sensitive about land invasions, precisely because
of Napoleon for one, and might not have wanted to play it up.

Although Napoleon and the Grande Armée eventually had to
retreat ignominiously from Russia, they had something of a victory at Borodino
and went on to burn Moscow. But their supply lines were too long, they had
taken many casualties at Borodino, and winter set in. Like many military
operations, the victories were ambiguous.

Tchaikowsky wrote the 1812 Overture to commemorate the
event. Here’s the London Symphony, with appropriate works of art.

For those who like the ending with cannons, just the ending, from
where the Russian national anthem overcomes the French.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Today’s Thanksgiving is an American holiday. But other
countries have their Thanksgivings and harvest festivals. I think there’s
something we all can give thanks for: that we humans seem to be improving
ourselves.

Yes, I’ve been following the news of Israel and Gaza and the
probably cynical calculations behind the deaths. We’re improving, and we’ve
still got some way to go.

But I think that Steven Pinker is right in The Better Angels of Our Nature: deaths
by violence are many fewer than they were, or than we expected them to be, even
a century ago. And I’m thankful for that.

I’ve seen big changes in my lifetime. Just yesterday I
received a copy of the March 29, 1954, Life Magazine. It has a story about the
Japanese fishermen caught up in the fallout of a US H-bomb test. The headline
reads “First Casualties of the H-Bomb.” First. We expected that there would be
more casualties.

The photo up top is a house I lived in, a long time ago.
There were fewer houses around it, more trees and a creek. It’s good to recall
where we came from.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

It seems to me that there are some deep psychological roots to survivalism. We all live with a variety of uncertainties, ranging from death to whether our car will start to finding we're out of cereal. And that's just on the personal side. Outside factors include storms and wars. Focusing on survival from whatever externalizes the anxiety on all these fronts and, perhaps, makes it easier to manage. It's a recurring theme in religion, from the Bible's Revelations to the anticipation of the supposedly Maya-predicted end next month. But those ends take matters out of our hands; again, it can be easier to prepare for - well, what? If society really does break down, or an asteroid hits, will this really keep you safe?

And, speaking of uncertainty, tomorrow, in addition to being Thanksgiving, is also the 49th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Beloit College publishes, every year, a sketch of the mindset the newest
college students bring to their colleges. Abby, who became famous when she expressed some impatience with the
presidential election but now is fine,
and her class of 2030 will know that American presidents can be
African-American and, very likely, women. That will appear in the 2026 Mindset
List, or possibly before.

The
Obama girls were lovely on election night. Their mindset lists will will be
different from Abby’s. And they will be voting in the next presidential
election, or the one after that. So will a lot of other young people for whom
segregated water fountains have never existed and the Soviet Union has always
been in the past; for whom gay marriage is a possibility and women, some of
whom are veterans, are taking a larger place in Congress.

The world keeps changing. It shocked me when the Mindset
List said that Elvis has always been dead, he who was so alive for my
adolescence. Dial phones, tape recorders, cameras that produce photos you can’t
see immediately – all long gone! And not just gone, but are no part whatsoever
of many citizens’ existence.

For now, let’s take the measure of what has happened, which
is historic enough. For the fifth time in the past six Presidential elections,
the Democrats have won the popular vote. For the second time in succession,
Americans have elected a black man as President. Throughout the country,
Republican extremists like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock have been repudiated.
Residents of Maryland and Maine (and probably Washington state, too) have voted
in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage.

More women in Congress. An openly gay Senator. A Buddhist Representative.
The acceptance of sexualities different from missionary-position white men.

Cassidy again:

The exit polls largely told the story. In the
nineteen-to-twenty-nine age group, Obama won sixty per cent of the vote. He got
ninety-three per cent of the black vote, seventy per cent of the Hispanic vote,
and seventy-five per cent of the Asian vote. Fifty-six per cent of women voted
for him, as did sixty-three per cent of unmarried people, two-thirds of secular
voters, and about four-fifths of gays and lesbians. Romney carried fifty-nine
per cent of white voters (male and female), a majority of all Americans aged
forty-five or over, and fifty-seven per cent of married people. In ideological
terms, Obama forged a liberal-moderate course to victory. Despite his
post-Convention lurch to the center, Romney couldn’t win over enough
self-identified moderates. In that group, Obama took fifty-seven per cent of
the vote.

So this Congress will be more diverse, which will make that
diversity seem more normal to children growing up, and as they become voters,
they are likely to vote for that kind of diversity and more. They won’t even
see it as diversity, just the way things are.

I keep wondering how it is to have grown up in a world so
different from the one I grew up in. The Soviet Union was a big part of my
childhood, but some of the social things were normalized for me early. Lud and
Bill, living in the big old Victorian house on the corner, were our neighbors –
and everyone was fine with that. In Sunday School, we sang “Jesus Loves the
Little Children,” and this picture was up on the wall (source – autoplay
music). I really believed that when I sang. Yes, the words and picture are a
bit stereotyped. But Google also gives us this.

So I think I can share a little of the younger mindsets,
although Elvis will be alive forever for me.

So Malia and Sasha and Abby will pocket many things that
seemed unachievable to us in the fifties and sixties. That will give them room
to think about what else could be better. Some of those things are already
obvious: income equity, infrastructure to suit an advanced country, normalizing
relations with a number of countries, ending Guantanamo and some of the other
mistakes from overreaction to 9/11. And they will see others. There is the
tiniest bit of beginning to think that war isn’t worth it.

All that, of course, could be derailed by any number of
things, but the record of the last half-century and the
last decade is pretty good. One of the things we’ll have to do is to make
sure we bring along those who are having a hard time adapting to this pace of
change.

And I’m sure that Malia and Sasha and Abby, and their
brothers and friends and cousins, will be up to it.

Tuesday, November 06, 2012

But even if Romney wins, we've had a good four years, and the campaign has brought out some good things.

Bloggers, as usual, were ahead of the curve, but the New York Times and the Washington Post excoriated Romney's lies and refusal to release his income tax returns. Our two newspapers of record only brought themselves to a principled editorial stand during this last week of the campaign, but we can hope that something of that sticks.

News coverage in general has slowly moved away from "both sides do it" to a recognition that one of our political parties has gone off the rails and has been willing to damage the United States if its leaders think that will help their party's electoral prospects. That party has also been willing to back the most misogynistic and science-misinformed of its members in the hopes of getting an "R" on one more House or Senate seat. Again, the news profession has moved only slightly toward reporting the real world, but we applaud them and hope they will continue.

That political party is in the throes of belief that it can order the universe to its preferences, back to the thrilling days of yesteryear, when men were men, America was tops, and, well, we won't point out that the top marginal tax rate in the 1950s, under Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was 94%. Politics does not have the same capability as science for jerking out the illusion rug from under one's feet, but we can hope that a ringing defeat today will supply another incremental change.

I've said before that President Obama has been using community organizing techniques to move the country toward the realization that we all are responsible for how we're governed, and there have been gains there too. It's subjective, but I think I'm seeing a change in people's willingness to take responsibility in those areas.

Yes, I hope that Nate Silver and the other quantitative predictors are right. But if they're wrong, I hope that movement continues in these directions.

The second of those has problems going beyond the headline. It's entirely possible that reporters born in or after the sixties have no knowledge of the theological ferment of that time. Liberal and liberation theology, Pope John XXIII, biblical criticism. The intellectual and philosophical arguments of that age seem to have been swept aside by megachurches and born-againness, the latter quoted in the article as if they had some standing in those areas. Note to religion reporters: Barack Obama's references to Reinhold Neibuhr mean something. Read up on that person and some of those who extended his work. The fifties and sixties are the time to look at. Other keywords for search are in this paragraph.